by John Ling
‘Don’t fuck with me. You know exactly who Onyx is.’
Kendra inched past yet another car. ‘No, I don’t know. I was only trying to help your friend. He was hurt real bad—’
‘Shut up! Just shut up!’
Kendra heard running footsteps, followed by Delta firing his weapon in a wild barrage. He was striking the car that he thought she was still hiding behind. Then Kendra heard the metallic echo of his pistol’s slide locking back on empty.
That surprised her.
Delta had given in to emotion, and now he had left himself exposed, running dry on ammo at the worst possible moment.
Exploit it. Now.
Kendra abandoned her plan to go for the ramp. Instead she went on the offensive. She button-hooked out of cover, bringing her pistol up to bear, sidestepping, and she caught Delta leaning against a minivan.
He was dropping his spent magazine and about to slot a fresh one in.
She jerked her chin, closing the distance. ‘Drop it. Drop it.’
Delta’s face was contorted in rage, and he slapped his magazine in anyway, releasing his gun’s slide and chambering a round.
Kendra double-tapped him in the chest.
He staggered back, grunting, bumping against the minivan’s side mirror. He fell to one knee, but he still managed to raise his weapon, his aim wobbling. He was obviously wearing a ballistic vest under his shirt.
Kendra had no choice.
So she double-tapped Delta in the forehead, and he went down for good.
11
Kendra took shaky breaths as she came down from the adrenaline high. The smell of gunsmoke filled her nostrils, and she felt sick to her stomach.
Goddamn it. I wanted him alive.
She stared at Delta’s body. Blood was pooling around his shattered skull, looking almost black against the concrete floor.
I had to do it. I had to. It was either him or me.
Grimacing, Kendra removed the suppressor from her pistol and holstered it, then she stowed away her ballistic vest.
She started patting Delta down, and she found his wallet. The driver’s licence said his name was Peter Wong, and just like Thomas Cronin, he worked in an investment firm on the North Shore.
She checked his phone, and as expected, it was blank. Set to self-erase.
She collected his gun, his knife, his ammo. Then, stepping back, she brought her own phone out and took pictures of Wong.
It was gruesome but necessary.
Already, the alarms from the cars had gone silent, cutting off automatically. The garage was quiet as a tomb.
Kendra was tempted to clean up after herself. Remove all the spent shell casings. Mop up the blood. Hide the body. Eliminate as much forensic evidence as possible.
But she didn’t have the time, not the inclination.
Fuck it.
Shaking her head, she made for the stairs.
12
By the time Kendra hit the sidewalk, the bells at a nearby church were tolling. When she got closer, she saw frightened people streaming in, looking for refuge, for solace.
She lingered for only a moment before moving on.
She headed west, away from the city centre, towards Ponsonby.
She wanted to put some distance between herself and the red zone, yes, but she also needed to get someplace where the traffic was free-flowing.
As she brisk-walked, Kendra thought back to the GPS navigation unit that she had found in the operators’ car.
She thought about Ryan’s parents.
What do they have to do with any of this? Are they involved? If so, how much?
She didn’t like the implications, and worse still, she couldn’t just ring up Deirdre Raines and seek clarification. As defiant as it was – as irrational as it was – she didn’t want Section One to get involved here. Because they couldn’t help her. Not with their fucking bureaucracy and rules and duplicity.
Kendra raked her hand through her hair, face pinched.
But... there was one person, at least, she could reach out to.
Getting out her phone, she used it to log into a darknet portal, and from there, into an email account she had set up years ago. It was designed for contingencies just like this one.
Kendra typed out a message to Jim Braddock.
Are they pitching up the circus tent today? Came across four clowns just now, and they didn’t look too funny. The acrobat tossing the knives was funny, though.
Kendra included her phone number and attached the photo she had taken of the dead operators, Thomas Cronin and Peter Wong. Then she saved the message as a draft and logged out.
The virtual cut-out was the perfect way to avoid detection. Because nothing was actually transmitted over the wider internet, the chances of interception were slim, and since Kendra was using a prepaid, disposable SIM on her phone, only Jim would be able to call her back. And when he did, he would be savvy enough to use a disposable SIM of his own.
Any contact between them would be off the radar.
Jim had been out of the service a long time, but he still had the inside juice on covert ops, and if there were rumblings on the circuit, he would know about it.
Kendra had faith that her mentor would give her a straight-up answer.
Still, she wasn’t sticking around to wait for his reply.
There wasn’t time.
She reached the New World supermarket at Freemans Bay. She skirted around it, and finally – finally – the streets ahead looked open and clear.
She flagged down a passing taxi. ‘Remuera, please.’
13
When the taxi driver pulled away from the kerb, he jerked his chin at the pillar of smoke blackening the sky. ‘Damn. Will you look at that? They’re saying it’s a gas-leak explosion. A construction crew dug up the wrong spot. Cut into a pipeline.’
Sitting in the back seat, Kendra met his eyes in the rear-view mirror. She gave him a non-committal shrug. ‘I was just passing through when they blocked off Queen Street. Didn’t get the chance to see much of anything.’
‘Yeah, well, it sounds bad. Real bad.’
Kendra stretched her lips thin. ‘Mm-hm.’
‘You’re lucky that I picked you up when I did. My dispatcher’s been bugging me to quit my fares in the inner city. With all that gas floating around, it’s just too dangerous.’
‘Yeah, too dangerous.’
The taxi driver smacked the steering wheel. ‘It’s the government and all their cost-cutting. They’re screwing around with our infrastructure and putting all of us at risk. I’m telling you, I’m voting them out the next time around. You ought to do the same.’
‘For sure.’ Kendra nodded politely, tuning out as he continued to vent.
They hit the motorway.
Kendra got out her phone and logged into the New Zealand Herald website. And, sure enough, the Farmers explosion was breaking news. Only, just like the taxi driver said, it wasn’t being reported as an act of terror.
Kendra furrowed her eyebrows.
They’re making it sound accidental. Unintended. And why would they do that unless they’re trying to cover up a counterterrorism op gone bad?
She could only guess which alphabet-soup agency was involved.
SIS? GCSB? NBCI?
Flexing her jaw, Kendra logged out of the Herald and into Google Maps. She zoomed in on Remuera. She panned back and forth over the topography, studying the lay of the land.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that something was waiting for her there.
Something ugly.
Inhaling, exhaling, Kendra thought back to what her therapist had said.
Avoid alcohol.
Avoid drugs.
Avoid emotional attachments.
Yeah, her therapist had warned her about the dangers of placing herself in a situation where she could lose control, because once the tipping point was reached, she could very well suffer another breakdown. A permanent one. And when that happened, Section One would ha
ve no choice but to commit her to the loony bin.
But – hell – here she was, doing exactly that. She was risking her sanity, her freedom and her life for a slippery descent into the heart of darkness.
Kendra leaned back against her seat and tried to rein in her emotions.
She could only hope that she was doing the right thing.
Whatever that was.
PART TWO
.
14
Remuera was a leafy suburb dotted with genteel mansions and rolling slopes and ocean views. It was prosperous, exclusive, picture-perfect.
Kendra had the taxi driver drop her off several streets down from the actual address, and she hit the sidewalk, breathing in the smell of sea salt as she performed a slow sweep of the neighbourhood.
She observed fashionable young mothers pushing their infants along in designer prams, well-groomed retirees sipping tea at upscale cafes, and yachts bobbing in the sun-kissed waters of the bay close by.
The mood was relaxed.
Almost too relaxed.
Shaking her head, Kendra realised that this place was a bubble wrapped within a bubble, where folks didn’t believe that the troubles of the world could touch them. Part of it was entitlement, and the other part of it was naiveté. And if the powers-that-be said that the blast in the city centre was an accident, well, they would buy it.
But Kendra knew better because she had seen the shadow of the beast, tasted a trace of its venom, and she wasn’t about to be lulled into a false sense of security.
She quickened her steps. She zigzagged from one side of the street to the other, then she backtracked.
Eyes darting, she searched for signs of surveillance. She checked for pedestrians who tried to echo her movements or tried to look as if they weren’t. And she inspected the vehicles around her – parked or passing. She checked to see if any had tinted windows, because tinted windows were a dead giveaway for covert observers.
Kendra moved in an elliptical loop.
She scanned far and near.
Nothing tripped her sixth sense.
Stretching her shoulders, Kendra adjusted the straps on her backpack. She felt secure enough to zero in on the address. So she moved off the sidewalk and stepped on to a cobbled pathway, entering a park.
Trees flanked her on either side, branches forming a canopy that swayed and swooshed overhead, penetrated only by shafts of sunlight. Stray leaves crackled under her shoes. Birds twittered.
It was idyllic.
Soon Kendra encountered a fork in the path, and without thinking, she chose to go right. And that led her straight into a recreational area, where children were playing on slides and swings and mazes, shrieking and laughing.
Kendra stared, and – damn – that’s when the melancholy hit her, like a talon scraping across her heart.
This was the place – the exact same place – that Ryan and her used to hang out.
Back when they were happy.
Back when they were innocent.
Before everything got fucked up beyond recognition.
Lips trembling, Kendra forced herself to turn away. Retracing her steps, she returned to the fork in the path and opted to go left this time.
It occurred to her why her subconscious had led her in the other direction to begin with. It was born out of a desire to revisit the pain, to punish herself. Because young love was fleeting, all too easily lost like tears in the rain.
Kendra dug her nails into her palms, cheeks twitching.
Focus. Focus on the objective. That’s the only thing that matters right now.
She took measured breaths.
Keep calm and carry on.
Soon Kendra reached the other end of the park, and she found a good vantage point – a bench positioned in a secluded alcove ringed by bushes. And Ryan’s parents’ home was just downhill, two-hundred metres away.
Sitting down, Kendra reached into her backpack.
She got out the monocular that was part of the surveillance gear.
Pressing it against her right eye, she aimed it downrange. The image was hazy at first, but then the lens whirred and automatically adjusted, and the mansion came into focus.
Yes, the place was just as she remembered it.
Lush.
Grandiose.
Imposing.
Kendra swept her gaze over the perfectly manicured gardens, the tennis court, the swimming pool.
No movement.
No threats.
So Kendra scanned the windows of the mansion itself. Left to right, top to bottom. And... it was strange. All the blinds and drapes were pulled tight. Every single one. There were no gaps to peek through. Not even a sliver.
Kendra inspected the rooftop, and she saw that the rollers on the skylights were shuttered as well.
It didn’t make sense.
She thought about Ryan’s mother, Leila. She remembered how the woman used to obsess about natural light and had insisted that the mansion be constructed to incorporate it. That was Leila’s pride and joy.
So why shut out all the sunshine? Especially on a summer day like this?
Kendra lowered her monocular. She mulled over the contradiction, and tilting her head, she got out her phone and dialled the mansion’s number from memory.
The line on the other end rang and rang, but no one picked up.
That felt very wrong.
Ryan’s father, Saeed, was active in business and philanthropic circles, and he had a reputation for being a perfectionist, a nitpicker. He would never have tolerated a missed call.
Such old-school sensibilities meant that a member of the household staff was always – always – on hand to answer the phone. And on the slim chance that no one at all was available, Saeed certainly would have made sure that the answering machine was connected.
Kendra sucked in a breath and hit the redial key on her phone. This time, she allowed the line to ring and ring until it timed out. All she was left with was a dead tone.
Damn it...
Kendra grimaced. She felt the slow burn of adrenaline in her gut. That incendiary mixture of dread and anticipation.
I’m going to have to move in.
15
Refocusing the monocular, Kendra measured the sight lines. She calculated the angles of approach, and she decided that there were two ways to reach the mansion.
The first option would be to descend the slope, turn left and exit the park. That would allow her to converge on the mansion from the front. Obvious enough. But that approach presented a problem – because the property sat at the end of a cul-de-sac, the street leading into it shared a single point of entry and a single point of exit.
Practically speaking, that was less than ideal, because if she did choose to go down that route, she would only be funnelling herself into a choke point. And if she ended up bumping into trouble – God forbid, an ambush – she’d have precious little room to manoeuvre.
Kendra shook her head.
Tight. Too damn tight.
Which meant that the second option was better. She would descend the slope, turn right and remain within the confines of the park. Just ahead was a pond, and snaking all around it was a walking track rimmed by tall grass and shrubbery, and directly beyond was the rear of the mansion.
Sure, the route was meandering, indirect, but the terrain was advantageous. It offered multiple directions for her to fall back on in the event of an emergency. And, of course, all the vegetation didn’t hurt – they would serve as cover.
And that settles it.
Puffing her cheeks, Kendra shouldered her backpack and moved down the slope.
She angled right.
She hit the walking track.
She observed ducks and geese squawking on the pond, joggers and cyclists making their rounds, and of course, the ubiquitous mothers pushing along their prams.
Kendra was conscious of every person she walked past – their smell, their aura.
Flexing her fingers, she kept her
arms close to her sides, ready to go tactical if anyone so much as gave her the wrong signal.
Her muscles tensed up.
Her skin prickled.
And, head swivelling, she closed in on the walls of the mansion.
Fifty metres.
Thirty metres.
Ten metres.
Breathing evenly, keeping her heart rate in check, Kendra peeled away from the walking track. She diverted to the mansion’s eastern side and found herself exactly where she needed to be – at the back gate, which led directly to the outhouse.
Huddling against a tree, she reached behind her and unzipped the top of the backpack. She pulled the ballistic vest over her head and secured it around her front. Then she drew her pistol and attached the suppressor.
She took aim at the CCTV camera perched on the wall above the gate and double-tapped it. Sparks flew, and the camera shattered with a dull thump.
Kendra approached the keypad beside the gate. She crinkled her lips. She searched her memory, then nodding, she punched in the security code.
1979.
The year of the Iranian Revolution.
The keypad chimed, and the gate unlocked.
16
Kendra slipped through the gate and moved into the rear courtyard. She sidled up beside the outhouse and assumed a bladed stance, pistol at the low-ready.
She glanced through the windows.
She saw garden tools in storage but nothing else of interest.
Inching along, Kendra peered quickly around the corner of the outhouse – once, twice – before slicing past it, pistol at the high-ready.
She moved forward in smooth, deliberate steps, minimising noise, maximising her balance.
Just ahead was the swimming pool, and as she drew closer, she saw twigs and leaves floating on its surface, forming a mucky layer.
That caused her to frown.
Leila and Saeed were absolute sticklers for tidiness. They were prone to micromanaging the affairs of their home, so it didn’t make sense that they would have allowed the pool to get clogged up like this.